AH, June. The month of weddings. Of lace and crystal. Of honeymoons on tropical beaches. Just pass any magazine rack and pick up a glossy bridal magazine. Tucked in between the bridal registry ads, you'll find advice on how to have the perfect gown, ceremony and honeymoon, how to get along with in-laws and even a hint or two on how to keep love alive. (Listening to each other and making space for your spouse, it seems, are good things to do.)

In the 19th century this kind of matrimonial advice wasn't so easy to find. But it was there, in slim how-to volumes, quaint in their imperfect understandings of physiology and sexuality, intentionally frightening in their contempt for wickedness and disease and apologetic for talking about such delicate matters at all. Sometimes they were refreshingly bold in their approach to the real heart of marriage -- how to treat each other. What follows is a bouquet of notions that your great-great grandparents might have read. MARC D. CHARNEY

One of the great mysteries for young married people was how to prevent pregnancy. Some methods, like the condom, are familiar today, but others have lost their following. Eugene Becklard, in a French book titled "Know Thyself: The Physiologist; Or Sexual Physiology Revealed" (published in Boston in 1859), describes one that appears in a number of guides:

Any exercise calculated to disturb the embryo within twenty-four hours after inception may be sufficient to prevent offspring. Dancing about the room, before repose, for a few minutes, might probably have that effect. But trotting a horse briskly over a rough road on the following day would insure it. But an 1855 guide by an anonymous Cincinnati physician shows no confidence in the theory:

The idea of every lady being bound to take a ride on horseback, or engage in a violent dance, every time she indulges in sexual pleasure, is so preposterous, as it is useless to discuss its merits as a general preventive. Few ladies, especially among the poor, in large cities, have horses at their command; and very few could take violent exercise of any kind every time it became necessary, without annoying others and exposing themselves.

The frame of mind and position during love-making, according to another theory, could influence the type of child born. Here's Mr. Becklard on contraception:

All attitudes of enjoyment but the natural one are inimical to fertility. However, they are not to be depended on; and, besides, it has been contended that they are frequently the means of monstrous conceptions.

Henry C. Wright, writing in "Marriage and Parentage: or, The Reproductive Element in Man, as a Means to His Elevation and Happiness" (Boston, 1855), makes a similar point, if more rhapsodically:

The soul should be in its happiest and most perfect state, free from care; the Love element in the entire ascendant; every element in the soul of each concentrated in love upon the other, and penetrated with a pure, intense desire for offspring. The body, in all its powers and functions, should be in full vigor, free from all weariness or lassitude, not excited by artificial stimulants of any kind. Conjugal love, when true, is attracted to purity, to beauty, to all that is sweet, tender, pure, delicate. I know two young sisters, opposite as the poles in their tendencies; one being fretful, impatient, revengeful, and seldom satisfied or in harmony with any thing or person around her; the other is exactly the reverse. Both have the same father and mother. What makes the difference? The difference in the conditions of the parents at the time of reproduction. The union from which the former derived existence was had when the parents were laboring under pecuniary anxieties and trials, that kept them in constant irritation and impatience, and suffering under a sense of wrongs received; -- that from which the other sprang, occurred under circumstances directly the reverse. One will suffer, and the other be happy, as the result of the different conditions of their parents at the time of conception.

Many of the pamphlets address the issue of disease (sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis were frightening because they were so little understood and so difficult to treat). What often followed was a discussion of bad habits in general. Here is Wright again:

How can a woman consent to become a mother by a man physically and spiritually polluted by tobacco, alcohol, or any foul, unnatural appetite and practice? How can a man receive as a wife, and become a father by, a woman whose body and soul are filled with enfeebling, polluting disease? Passion, gross sensualism, may bring such together, and enable them to propagate; but pure love, never. Such love cannot be attracted to uncleanness and meanness, of body or soul. The offspring of impure, unclean souls and bodies, must, of necessity, be defiled. Insanity, idiocy, anger, revenge, and diseases of various kinds and degrees, appear in the children born of such unions. Wright also offers advice that a modern marriage counselor might find perfectly wise:

I have thought that young people, both men and women, often mistake their own wants in marrying their friends. As they grow up, they naturally seek each other's society, and find a sympathy and understanding which they cannot find in those of their own sex. This goes on, till some circumstance occurs to separate them; and to avoid that apparent calamity, they marry. If they would have the courage to go apart, and remain wholly separated from the personal presence and influence of each other, time would reveal what and how deep was the real attraction between them. So true it is, that those who might spend their lives in harmony as friends, hate each other when they assume a more intimate relation.

When two persons of parallel dispositions or appearance are united, it is common to observe that they are a well-matched couple. In fact, however, they are not; and the very resemblance which seems to claim admiration, is a strong ground for saying that they are unsuitable companions. The profound physiologist will readily admit the justness of the assumption; and that marriages are most happy and most productive of healthy and handsome offspring, when the husband and wife differ, not only in mental conformation, but in bodily construction. A melancholy man should mate himself with a sprightly woman, and vice versa; for otherwise they will grow weary of the monotony of each other's company. By the same rule, should the choleric and the patient, the ambitious and the humble, be united; for the opposites of their natures not only produce pleasurable excitements, but each keeps the other in a wholesome check. Had Macbeth been married to a person of a disposition less aspiring than his own, he would never have murdered king Duncan.

The Wife's Body

Women also published advice, some of it with the idea that women suffered in marriage as it was practiced at the time and needed specific advice. In "The Relations of the Sexes" (New York, 1876), Mrs. E. B. Duffey sets out to tell "truths . . . which have never before found their way into any book." She writes disparagingly about "the seemingly uncontrollable demands of a sexual nature upon men" and their relationship to bad living and "impure thoughts."

These sexual instincts in the male are felt as soon as he reaches puberty -- perhaps more strongly at that time than at any other . . . Too early an exercise of the sexual organs in a youth will stunt his development and perhaps kill him outright.

At the end, she argues for the right of a woman to express -- or withhold -- her sexual nature freely:

Women are not like men in sensual matters. They -- the most of them at least -- do not love lust for lust's sake. Passion must come to them accompanied not only with love, but with the tender graces of kindness and consideration and self-denial, or they are quickly disgusted. Let the word engraved on the portal of your marriage structure be "freedom." Then shall you enjoy a "free love" of which those who oftenest repeat the term never dream.

I shall not be satisfied with merely influencing men to give their wives their freedom in sexual matters. I wish to impress upon the wives themselves that this is one of their inborn rights. The right to self will be a new doctrine to many wives and husbands. But it is the true doctrine; and upon it is based all the happiness that can possibly be found in the marriage state. The wife's body is unqualifiedly her own, except that she may be guilty of no infidelity to her husband. She should give or withhold her favors according to her own best judgment, uninfluenced either by fear or over-persuasion. A man has no "marital rights" in this respect, except to take what is granted to him freely and lovingly. A woman is no more bound to yield her body to her husband after the marriage between them, than she was before, until she feels that she can do so with the full tide of willingness and affection. I know these are hard truths, but it is time the world began to recognize them as truths.